Tag Archives: communications

Getting great photos for your nonprofit’s marketing needs takes planning.

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a primitive figure, like a petroglyph, shots through a megaphone

I’ve been working at a local Habitat for Humanity affiliate for more than a year now. It’s been a challenging, enlightening, really fun experience.

I have said repeatedly over the years that working at a local nonprofit or in a local government initiative can be fantastic training to work internationally in humanitarian and development programs; it’s also true that working in humanitarian and development programs is great training for this kind of local work! For instance, because I’ve worked internationally, I already knew the importance of not engaging in poverty porn: not sharing photos that present clients as weak or desperate, not sharing photos that show only clients receiving charity, etc.

I’ve spent more than a year hyper-focused on creating a robust archive of a diversity of volunteers in action at our house builds, our home repair projects, our neighborhood cleanups and in our ReStore. Talking to our field staff about how to take and share photos and recruiting a volunteer specifically to come to events to take photos, as well as being at as many events myself as possible, have all been essential in creating this large archive. At this point, I could take a year off and still have more than enough photos of volunteers-in-action for all of our communications needs in 2024 (however, I will NOT be taking a year off).

In the next year, I’ll be hyper-focused on a different communications need: photos of clients. We do not have nearly enough! And I don’t want to have to over-rely on Habitat’s excellent compilation of photos from all across the USA that I could use; I don’t like using stock photos, because I prefer to have my own photo archive representing our own community (and you should too). It’s going to be a challenge: we don’t want to overburden our partner families with requests, we don’t want to make some very shy folks do anything that would make them uncomfortable, and many of our families have moved on to many other priorities, things far more important than a photo session with me. We have written the families and asked for family photos – like of everyone gathered around a Christmas tree, if they celebrate such, and we did end up with one great one!

What’s going to be required is more relationship-building on my part. I need to make sure the clients know me and trust me. For our home-buying partners, that’s easier, because the organization already has a long-term relationship with them. But for home repair clients and people living in neighborhoods where we have cleanup events. it’s shorter-term interactions, and a lot of homeowners are embarrassed to need such help. It’s going to take careful conversations and being there with staff they already trust to make this happen.

One thing I’m also going to do is to try to get a series of shots that show progress on our house builds: I’m going to take the “same” shot from the same place every month from the start to finish of a house build.

As I pursue more client photos in 2024, I want to remind you all of some things to keep in mind for your own photo-taking for your nonprofit or community endeavor (and I’m assuming you will be taking the photos with just a camera phone / smart phone):

  • Make sure all employees, consultants, clients and volunteers have signed a photo release, and you can lay your hands on that signed release easily. It’s best to have this release signed at the time they sign anything else with your organization, like an application or a contract. This allows you to take photos anywhere and everywhere without worrying if you have permission to do so.
  • But even though you have signed, written permission, be sure to announce to everyone your name and that you will be taking photos. Tell them the photos are for social media, for your website and for your publications, like your annual report. Tell people how they can request copies of any photos. Assure people that you are going to take respectful photos and always ensure anyone in a photo looks terrific.
  • If clients or volunteers say they do not want their photos shared on social media or in print, honor those requests. If you might have trouble remembering, ask them, when they see you taking a photo that they would be in, to hold up their hand, palm out. That way, when you go through the photos, you will get the reminder that that person did not want to have their photo taken, and you can edit them out of photos as needed, or not use certain photos.
  • Before the event where you are going to take photos, make a wish list of photos you want most: women using construction tools, a young person and an older person working on something together, volunteers gathered around a lead volunteer for the morning orientation, etc. That makes it easier to be on the lookout for those moments.
  • Take a photo at the start of the event, or whenever you remember, that will tell you where and when this event is. It might be a sign welcoming attendees or an information board or the sign on the venue or the front of a t-shirt created especially for the event. Your photos will automatically be dated by your phone camera, and when you go through them, and see the sign or information board, you will remember where the event was, who it involved, etc.
  • Yes, you MAY stage photos. You are not a journalist; you are a marketing person. Don’t hesitate to tell a group to turn to the camera and smile, or to hold up their hammers triumphantly!
  • Front-lighting illuminates a subject. Back-lighting can hide faces.
  • Photos can be easily cropped, especially if you are taking high-resolution photos. Don’t worry if you think a photo isn’t framed perfectly while you are taking it; cropping may do that later. Filters can also sometimes fix photos that are too dark.
  • Capture people in action as much as possible (especially volunteers).
  • Smiling faces are not absolutely necessary. If someone doesn’t smile when you say “smile”, that’s okay.
  • If you think a photo is especially unflattering to a person, don’t use it.
  • Avoid “butt” shots. These are the photos of someone who is bending over away from the photographer.
  • You can’t take “too many” photos. You can go through them later and weed out the unusable ones.
  • When you look through your photos, delete the ones that depict unsafe conditions (or put them aside and talk to the site supervisor about these incidents). For instance, at Habitat sites, volunteers under 18 may not use power tools or work above ground level, volunteers must wear safety goggles when operating power tools, tools should not be placed on ladders, hard hats should be worn at all times and, when on ladder, a person should maintain three points of contact and avoid leaning.
  • Use only first names when identifying people in photos on social media or in any print publication for the public, or say something that identifies the family but protects privacy, like, “the Hernandez Family.”
  • Google photo share area is AMAZING. If you have a gmail account, you have a Google photo archive. Just log into your gmail account and then go to photos.google.com and you will come to YOUR photo account. Don’t be shocked if you see photos there already; if you tie your apps on your phone to Google, this happens automatically. The problem is that you are using your own phone, and switching back and forth on a phone between a work Google account and a personal account is a pain. How I do it: the photos go to my personal account and then, on a laptop, I download the most recent, then upload them to my work account.

Note that I’m not the only photographer where I work: I ask everyone to take photos if they are at any event with volunteers or clients “in action.” They don’t take many, so I ask them to send such to a gmail account we have set up especially for photos; Google makes it super easy to transfer photos that are email attachments in that account over to the photo drive.

But be sure to have a backup of your photos elsewhere: on whatever backup system you use, on a separate Google account, and/or on a hard drive.

Also see these previous blogs which have links to sample policies and guidelines for taking photos of vulnerable people:

humanitarian stories & photos – use with caution

Poverty porn, survivor porn, inspiration porn

The opposite of poverty porn: erasing clients from storytelling

What I’ve learned working at Habitat for Humanity

Do you welcome people with your language?

a hand is receiving money

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When some nonprofit employees & volunteers don’t really understand what the nonprofit is trying to address & why

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image that represents a panel discussion

I believe that everyone that works at a nonprofit, whether they are the Executive Director or the janitor, is seen as a communicator on behalf of that nonprofit. People are going to ask any employee or volunteer at a nonprofit a question about what that nonprofit does and why, and the person asked needs to be able to give at least a short, accurate description and then direct the person to the appropriate staff person (that person’s phone number or email) to get more info.

Too often, I see a disconnect between non-profit staff and the staff that work with clients and funders regarding what the nonprofit does and why. For instance, an IT staff member once came into my office at the United Nations program where I worked and said, “What does this UN program do? I don’t think I really understand.” And the more I talked with him, the more I realized he had NO idea not only what our program did, but what the UN really does.

I have seen and heard non-program employees and volunteers making unfortunate, even inaccurate, statements about the issues a nonprofit is trying to address – among themselves, to their family, on their own social media, to friends, to someone who they are interacting with as part of their job, etc. The consequences are REAL: they have now created misinformed members of the community, and these people will, in turn, talk to others. Maybe they won’t donate money or volunteer as a result – and will discourage others from doing so.

I would love to read any blogs or articles about how to address such a disconnect within an organization where some employees and volunteers don’t have a clear idea of what the nonprofit they work for does, why that is the mission, etc. I’d like to read blogs and articles that also have a strong argument for why ensuring all staff understand such is vital. For instance, why do frontline employees and volunteers at a thrift store that funds a nonprofit addressing poverty, job training, addiction, etc. need to understand where other funding comes from, how services are delivered, etc.? How do you get senior staff on board with making sure all staff and volunteers see that video you just shared with donors about the great work of the nonprofit, for instance?

If you know of such, please drop them in the comments.

What Are Your Volunteers Saying?

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image of a panel discussion

This is adapted from a blog originally published in January 2003 at the e-volunteerism Journal. I was living in Germany at the time, hence the comment at the start of the blog:

On a recent visit back to the USA, I heard very different opinions about volunteerism from two good friends.

The first said that she will never volunteer again. “I have tried to volunteer for more organizations than I can count. I have tried to volunteer with groups that help animals, with political groups, with women’s groups, and it’s always the same thing: they don’t return my calls, and if they do and they tell me to come in, they don’t care that I’m there once I show up. They don’t want to answer my questions, they look at me as a burden or, worse, as someone that has no feelings at all. I’m just free labor to them, and I’m sick of it.”

Harrumph.

The second friend said she couldn’t get enough of volunteering. Her favorite role has been head of the Parent-Teachers Association at her daughter’s elementary school. “I just love it! I get all this responsibility and respect I’ve never gotten in my job. I feel like I’m really doing something. I feel like I’m making a difference. I love just about everybody I get to work with and, when I don’t, I can still work something out. I just feed off this stuff.”

These two testimonies regarding volunteerism make me wonder if the organizations these two assisted are aware of their feelings. And so I ask volunteer managers reading this to consider: What would people who have volunteered with your organization say about their experience?

Do you know? Do you care?

If anything, these two episodes have made me realize yet again the value of surveying volunteers about their experience, and how easily this can be done using e-mail.

Granted, two people can have very different opinions about the same situation: one person will find my bi-weekly e-mail updates to current volunteers too detailed and too frequent; another will complain that there needs to be more information, sent more often. Still, for the most part, there will be enough similar responses to your questions about volunteering to see trends emerge for your organization.

Informal “Quickie” Surveys

Too many organizations survey only those who have completed at least one assignment with the agency, or survey those volunteers only once as part of some detailed, intensive evaluation program. Those kind of long, involved surveys are indeed important, but just as important are providing plenty of opportunities for current and potential volunteers to offer feedback, however brief, about their experiences at any point in the process.

Here are some suggestions:

  • Require all volunteers attending a group event to sign out and complete a brief three-question/five-minute survey right then and there before they leave. Examples of questions for group events include:
    • Why did you come here today?
    • What benefits do you think the organization got as a result of your service today?
    • If you could change one thing about your experience today, what would it be?
  • If you really can’t do a survey on the spot, then at least email everyone and ask them to fill out a quick survey. Follow up with reminders to ensure most volunteers respond.
  • Conduct “walking around” informal surveys during events and activities. Simply ask volunteers you encounter questions such as “What else would be helpful to you?” or “How would you change what you are doing?” Sometimes these “heat of the moment” questions can elicit more frank opinions than post-event questionnaires, especially from those reluctant to commit to a written response.
  • Once a year, send out an email to everyone who has ever expressed interest in volunteering and ask them if they did, indeed, volunteer at your organization and, if so, how would they describe the experience? If they didn’t volunteer, ask them what prevented them from doing so.

There are ways to get even more feedback:

  • Put a notice on the Web page that describes volunteering at your organization, saying: “Have you volunteered with our organization? Tell us about your experience!” This invites feedback from anyone at anytime.
  • Hand out a brief survey at a board meeting and ask the members three or four quick questions about their volunteering, to be completed in the first five minutes of the meeting. Let members stay anonymous in their responses. At the next board meeting, hand out their answers for discussion.
  • Conduct exit interviews of any departing volunteers, where possible. Ask the volunteers to evaluate their experience and make suggestions for improvement.

Finding the Right Question

There are questions I like to ask beyond the “what did you like and dislike” traditional queries:

  • What were your expectations before volunteering and how did your actual experience differ?
  • What did you learn because of your volunteering?
  • If you were to tell someone about your experience today, what would you say?
  • How do you think our organization has benefited from your volunteering?
  • How have you been recognized for your volunteer efforts at our organization?
  • How does staff support you in your volunteering with our organization?
  • Do you feel prepared for your volunteer work here? What else can we do to increase your skills?

These deeper questions may allow you to understand “why” volunteers are reacting the way they are and can surface helpful suggestions for improving your volunteer management system.

Here are sample questions a survey for volunteers at First Night Doylestown:

Did you enjoy volunteering?
Would you be likely to volunteer again?
How many hours were you on duty?
Was that amount of volunteer time
What could we have done better to help you in your volunteer position?
What was the best thing about volunteering for First Night Doylestown?
May we quote you? (we might want to use these comments in our recruiting efforts in the future)

Here are some survey questions that were asked by the Dartmouth University’s Oxbow student volunteer program:

What were your expectations at the beginning of the program?
Were your expectations fulfilled? Why or why not?
What were the strengths of the program? What was your favorite day and why?
What were the weaknesses of the program? What aspects need work?
Did you feel well informed and adequately trained? What information or training could we offer new volunteers in the future?
Do you plan to continue participating in this program?
What information can you provide that will be helpful to future volunteers?

Here is an example of a feedback form from the IVY project of Portland, OR

What would you tell your family and friends about what you did today?

Would you be interested in coming back to Forest Park to help with the Ivy Removal Project again?

What would you tell someone who came to remove Ivy for the first time in Forest Park?

What made the greatest impression on you today?

Do you have any suggestions or great idea to share?

Utilizing the Results

You will need to compile the feedback you receive from volunteer surveys and then share at least a summary with staff and the volunteers themselves. It’s especially important to note how any of the feedback is going to be acted upon in the coming weeks and months.

Just by asking such questions, you are demonstrating to supporters and potential supporters the importance of volunteers to your organization; the follow-up will reinforce that idea even more.

Reader Response Questions:

  1. What are your favorite quick-survey methods to get information from volunteers?
  2. What are your favorite non-traditional questions to ask of volunteers?

Also see:

Measuring the Impact of Volunteers: book announcement

Make volunteering transformative, not about # of hours

CNCS continues its old-fashioned measurement of volunteer value

Free: Planning, Monitoring & Evaluating for Development Results (handbook)

History & Evaluation of UNV’s Early Years

where are the evaluations of hacksforgood/appsforgood?

Also see: My consulting services

If you have benefited from this blog, my other blogs, or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help. 

How to connect & engage with volunteers remotely – even when those volunteers work onsite

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Well before the COVID-19 pandemic, nonprofits, NGOs and other organizations that involve volunteers were leveraging a variety of tools to communicate with those volunteers, and understood that ALL volunteers are, at some point, remote: even if all of their volunteering service is provided onsite, much of the communications with them happens when they are in their homes or work places. For organizations that were relying solely on onsite meetings, physical bulletin boards in the break room and paper letters and paper newsletters, the pandemic meant they had to quickly catch up and implement new ways of keeping volunteers informed (not to mention engaged) and to hear back from those volunteers regularly.

How do you effectively communicate with volunteers remotely? It takes much more than email – though email remains oh-so-important:

Have a web site that has all the info current volunteers need.
Absolutely, you need information on your web site to entice new volunteers and a way for candidates to express interest in volunteering via that web site, whether via an application they can submit online or an email address of your manager of volunteers. But current volunteers also need information from your web site: the list of current staff members, the profile of your executive director, the history of your organization, evaluations of your programs, the latest news about your organization, etc. Volunteers need to have that central place they can go to for reliable, complete information about the program they support.

Keep your social media up-to-date & encourage volunteers to follow your accounts
Your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and other accounts shouldn’t be focused on just encouraging people to donate money; your social media channels should have regularly-updated information about upcoming events, the results of events that just happened, breaking news about your organization, etc. Your social media audience includes your CURRENT volunteers, and they need to be kept up-to-date about what’s going on so they can properly represent your organization while they are volunteering. Your social media should also talk about the cause: a nonprofit theater should be posting about how students involved in performing do better in school, a nonprofit animal shelter should be posting about studies that show how a family’s health can improve if they have a dog, etc. Again, this helps volunteers become better advocates for your organization, including in casual conversations with friends and colleagues.

Online Discussion Groups & Channels for Volunteers
Group emails are one-way communications and can result in replies from volunteers filling up your email in-box, with the same questions asked over and over. “Reply all” conversations become tedious and unwieldy. By contrast, using a private online group can allow you to communicate with all vounteers quickly and allow everyone to see the answer to a question they may have as well. This can include using Whats App, Signal or Similar Direct Messaging Apps in Volunteer Support & Engagement.

Building a team culture among remote workers
Coming together face-to-face, in the same room, does not automatically create team cohesion and a strong sense of team. Yet, many people think having online meetings automatically means it’s difficult for staff to have a strong sense of team. People feel a part of a team if they feel heard and included, whether online or off. And they will attend meetings and pay attention to those meetings if they feel the meeting is relevant to their work – on or offline. This resource offers ideas for live events, asynchronous events & activities that can build a sense of team among remote workers.

Recognizing Online Volunteers & Using the Internet to Honor ALL Volunteers
Recognition helps volunteers stay committed to your organization, and gets the attention of potential volunteers — and donors — as well. With the Internet, the Cloud, cyberspace, whatever you want to call it, it’s never been easier to show volunteers — and the world — that volunteers are a key part of your organization’s successes. This resource provides a long list of suggestions for both honoring online volunteers and using the Internet to recognize ALL volunteers that contribute to your organization.

Also see:  How to Immediately Introduce Virtual Volunteering at Your Program and Helping online volunteers stay engaged & energized.

cover of Virtual Volunteering book with hands raising up various Internet connected devices

If you want to learn even more about how to leverage online tools to communicate with and support volunteers, whether those volunteers are mostly online (virtual volunteering) or they provide service mostly onsite at your organization, and to dig far deeper into the factors for success in supporting online volunteers and keeping virtual volunteering a worthwhile endeavor for everyone involved, you will not find a more detailed guide anywhere than The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. It’s based on many years of experience, from a variety of organizations. It’s available both as a traditional print publication and as a digital book.

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.

9 tips to improve your DEI in communications

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The Communications Initiative is a resource I rely on regularly. I cannot say enough fantastic things about it. Over the last several months, I have been unsubscribing from a lot of email newsletters and unfollowing a lot of pages on Facebook, trying to declutter my online life, but I continue to make time to read the Communications Initiative updates. If you work in any capacity regarding communicating with clients or the general public regarding your nonprofit, NGO or government agency, this is a must-use resource.

The Communications Network created an online resource to change norms and practices in communications for social good, with an eye towards greater inclusion and diversity. The resource was developed in partnership with M+R and We-Collab. The introduction says:

Your outreach seeks to educate, involve, and engage your organization’s stakeholders. Outreach that honors diversity, equity, and inclusion is no different, other than the intentionality of your decisions. It requires you to understand who your audience is beyond the data points. It requires you to know what their priorities are, and then to craft messages and engagements that are inclusive to them. DEI outreach goes beyond reaching out, it requires them to bring people in.

We’ve created these nine tips with the communicator in mind. It’s flexible, so use it as a checklist, a launching point for a discussion, or even an assessment survey to improve your DEI communications.

It’s fantastic.

Also see these related blogs from me:

If you have benefited from this blog, my other blogs, or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help. 

Don’t over-invest in one social media channel (particularly Facebook)

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Did you discover last month that your nonprofit, NGO, government program or other cause-based, mission-based initiative is overly reliant on Facebook?

Sara Soueidan is a front-end user interface (UI) and design systems engineer / speaker / trainer and she tweets about usability and accessibility. On October 4th, when Facebook went down for several hours, she tweeted this:

While we’re at it: if you don’t have a Web site of your own and you’ve been blogging and creating content on third-party platforms, now might be a good time to reconsider creating one and owning your own little corner of the internet.

I completely agree. I am horrified at how many nonprofits, NGOs, government programs and other cause-based organizations have pretty much abandoned their own web sites and post only to Facebook.

  • Facebook is a for-profit company. If Facebook goes away tomorrow, there goes all of your data. By contrast, the address of your web site is yours, and if your web host were to go away, no problem – you move your site to a new host. Your address doesn’t have to ever change. You can move your web site to a different host is you decide you don’t like the host’s customer service or prices, or if the host goes out of business.
  • Facebook terms of service strongly imply that whatever you post there, Facebook owns, and that Facebook has the right to sell or give what you post to Facebook, even in your account profile, that you have marked as “private”, to anyone it wants to. By contrast, a web site is yours. The content and the address are yours.
  • Facebook content is only for Facebook users. If someone doesn’t have a Facebook account, they cannot see most of what is on Facebook. By contrast, a web site is public and anyone with Internet access can see it.

Your web site is your primary home on the Internet. Everything you do online, including on social media, should ultimately link back to your web site. Yes, you can use the Facebook events feature to announce events, but that event information should be on your web site as well. And remember that many of your clients, volunteers, donors and others use different social media channels. Have you asked them not only if they are on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or whatever the flavor of the month is, but also if they would want to interact with your program on these.

Your blog should be on your own web site as well. I use WordPress, which is free, but I use my own web site to host it. Twice, my blog host has gone under, and in both cases, neither was captured on archive.org. Luckily, one did give me enough of notice for me to download all of my blogs, so I could repurpose many of them here.

I even screen capture Twitter or Facebook interactions that are particularly memorable or worth bragging about, and upload them to Flicker and maintain a database of such, and all of my photos, on a hard drive.

Yes, there are people who are going to interact online with your initiative only via Facebook. Or Twitter. Or even only via email. None of those audiences are more important than another for your nonprofit, NGO, etc. Make sure all of your clients, volunteers, donors and others are reminded regularly of all of your various online communications channels – and your web address!

Also see:

If you have benefited from this blog, my other blogs, or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help. 

Training on risk management in social media

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A coalition of nonprofits in my hometown in Kentucky asked me to put together a two-hour webinar on risk management in social media. And I did. I delivered it in early November 2020.

When I put together a new training on a subject I’ve not trained on before, I do a lot of research on the subject, to make sure my recommendations are timely and accurate. While I can base a lot of my trainings and blogs on my own experiences, I want to see what others are saying and doing as well.

For instance, for this workshop, I researched who “owns” a person’s online activities – when is a social media account the property of an individual and when is it the property of their workplace? The answer is different now than it was back in the 1990s when I directed The Virtual Volunteering Project. When are you speaking online such that it could bring your employer or program where you volunteer into disrepute – and can you be fired for that – and when is it your personal, individual opinion that your employer cannot take into consideration regarding your employment or volunteering? There have been a fair number of controversies about this over the years, and I was surprised at what I found.

I also researched people being fired for social media posts on their own, personal social media accounts and found that, often, those accounts were NOT public. How common is it? It’s very common. Here’s a sampling of what I found:

Employees, consultants and volunteers being fired, or having their contracts not renewed, because of posts they made to social media that disparaged certain groups or advocated violence, even via their own, personal, not public social media accounts, is something I’ve been paying attention to since 2011, via this thread on the TechSoup online community forum.

It’s not a black or white issue regarding firing someone for social media posts: while employers can and do fire employees over social media issues, there are also instances where it would potentially be illegal to do so and employees have been reinstated or been awarded financial compensation. This article from 2018 does the best job, IMO, of explaining when you may, and may not, fire someone for a social media post. This 2020 article from the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) is also excellent.

But I really didn’t want to get bogged down in my training on whether or not someone should be fired regarding a social media post, not only because I’m not a lawyer, but because I don’t think that’s what’s needed in such a training for nonprofits, libraries, etc. Instead, I focused on how to prevent or, at least, reduce the likelihood of such posts from happening at all and what to do when they do happen, from a PR perspective in terms of response.

The reality is that the most common problems nonprofits, charities, NGOs, schools and other mission-based programs will face from social media use by employees won’t relate to a lawsuit – they will relate to public reaction to something posted or “liked” or followed by an employee, consultant, volunteer or client from the program. And I believe the program’s body of work and body of social media posts, as well as that organization’s relationship with the community, are the greatest counter to negative fallout from a social media mistake or from one staff person who turns out to have a deeply-ceded prejudice that could affect their work with others.

I had a four-pronged approach to suggest to the audience about risk management in using social media:

  • You want to create and promote a culture that better discourages, even prevents, social media missteps.
  • You want to create and promote written policies that better discourage and prevent social media missteps.
  • You need to talk to employees, consultants and volunteers frankly about social media use, because conversations reinforce to staff that they need to be thoughtful about what they are posting and “liking” or following online, at all times, even when they are “off the clock.”
  • You want to have a strategy for how you will respond to when an employee or volunteer violates your social media policies and/or makes statements or likes or follows something online, even “off the clock”, that bring your organization or program into disrepute.

I spent a LOT of time emphasizing how to prevent inappropriate social media posts by employees, consultants and volunteers from happening in the first place and what to do to now so that it will mitigate damage when an inappropriate social media post surfaces. I think the most important strategy for a nonprofit, charity, government program, etc. on both of these points is establishing and reinforcing an agency’s culture regarding being a welcoming place, onsite and online, for all people, regardless of their age, race, gender identification, citizenship or residency status, disabilities, religion (or lack there of) or sexual preference.

You need to say, bluntly, in writing, in interviews, in new employee and new volunteer orientations, etc., that you are an organization that recognizes deep-ceded historic inequities and systematic racism in society, including the local community, and that your program is committed to evaluating its activities through the lense of equity and social justice and inclusion.

The more you emphasize this culture, the more some candidates for employment or volunteering will screen themselves out of your organization – someone who cherishes the activity of insulting and demeaning others or denies social inequities or who follows people who promote prejudice and conspiracy theories is not going to want to volunteer nor work with you otherwise if you are so upfront about your agency’s commitments.

I was pleased to find that what I was recommending was, in different words, also what the Forbes Nonprofit Council recommended, via this article, How To Ensure Volunteers And Staff Follow Your Ethical Standards.

To summarize the entire training’s messages:

  • Social media is worthwhile and even necessary for a nonprofit, NGO, charity, school, government agency or any mission-based program to use. You harm your organization or program and exclude vast numbers of donors, volunteers, clients and other supporters by not using it.
  • Agencies can’t come from a place of fear in using social media. If they do, they’ll never realize the wonderful potential of social media to connect with audiences.
  • Programs must realize that there is no way to prevent any bad thing from ever happening via something an employee, consultant or volunteer says or writes or likes or follows online, and that they cannot completely control employee, consultant and volunteer behavior, online and off.
  • An agency should engage in activities regularly that emphasize its values to employees, consultants and volunteers. 
  • An agency should have written policies regarding confidentiality (not just online), privacy (not just online), and the program’s official online and print communications. 
  • An agency should have written suggestions & other communications regarding “using common sense” online.
  • Employees, consultants, volunteers & maybe clients need training in social media.
  • There are ways to effectively address social media messages or other activities by employees, consultants and volunteers that reflect poorly on your agency or even bring it into disrepute.

Would you like for me to do a training for your organization? Here’s more about my online trainings / webinars. I can create, and have created, trainings on a variety of subjects, and trainings on communications tools and techniques for nonprofits, particularly small nonprofits, are my favorite. My trainings are based on practice and real-world experience: I am a manager of volunteers and a volunteer myself, I have a great deal of experience in communications for nonprofits and international aid agencies, and I continually keep up-to-date on what various programs, large and small, are doing with regard to community engagement.

If you are looking for training on virtual volunteering, I highly recommend you first view this series of online videos I prepared that, in around one hour, will give you a clear understanding of virtual volunteering and how you can pursue it at your organization.

cover of Virtual Volunteering book with hands raising up various Internet connected devices

Couple viewing these free videos with purchasing and reading my book, The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, and you will have all that you need for launching or expanding a robust virtual volunteering scheme at your nonprofit, charity, school, etc. You will not find a more detailed guide anywhere for working with online volunteers and using the Internet to support and involve all volunteers – even after home quarantines are over and volunteers start coming back onsite to your workspace. And it’s far, far cheaper than hiring me as a consultant or trainer regarding virtual volunteering – though you can still do that, particularly if it’s regarding some specific aspect of virtual volunteering, let setting up an online mentoring program.

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site or my YouTube videos and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help. 

your nonprofit is still relevant during COVID19 – SHOW HOW

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If you are a nonprofit focused on helping the homeless, addressing hunger or nutrition, helping people with a chronic illness or children or seniors, helping people with addiction issues, your services are still hugely in demand and it’s easy for people to see how your nonprofit is relevant during COVID19 and all that it’s bringing to individuals and the community-at-large, like unemployment, social isolation and being homebound without onsite visits. I’ve noticed many nonprofits trying to address domestic violence have done an excellent job at messaging these days, noting that the requirements to stay at home have created a very dangerous scenario for those they try to serve and what they are trying to do to address that. If you represent such a nonprofit, you may even have seen a spike in donations as a result.

But if you are a nonprofit focused on live theater, artwork, dance, history, recycling or some other thing that isn’t directly, obviously related to the consequences of COVID19, it can feel like you are being lost amid all the calls for continuing to support nonprofits and addressing this pandemic.

ALL NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS MATTER to SOMEONE, at the very least. If a nonprofit doesn’t matter, it shouldn’t exist.

This is not the time to pause your nonprofit’s communications, wait for things to get better and hope people will remember your nonprofit when we’re through this, or to think that relaunching your public activities once public gatherings can happen again will immediately bring people back to engaging with your program and supporting it financially. Instead, your nonprofit, no matter its focus, needs to be thinking about what messages it can send out on its blog and social media channels, linked from its web site, about its work that will be relevant in these times. It needs to strategize about how to get those messages out and how to invite digital engagement on them as well.

Here are some ideas:

  • Historical societies and history museums need to be posting about what the culture or community they are focused on did in the past regarding an epidemic, a pandemic or other widespread hardship, with photos, any first-person stories they have on file or accounts by others. Did your city experience the so-called Spanish Flu and, if so, what happened in that time? Share stories of hope, courage, sorry, and with each message, remind people what your organization does to preserve local culture. This doesn’t have to be one major online publication – you can publish just one thing once a week, even twice a week. Always invite feedback on such – some people may have photos and diaries they would like to share with you from that time.
  • Historical societies should be finding free broadcasts of history-related topics (such as on public television) and encouraging home-based live-watch parties, and for everyone in their own community that’s watching to share thoughts as they watch on a Facebook thread or Tweet chat designed for them to share such. At least some of these quotes will demonstrate the power of learning about history and be great in a grant proposal.
  • History societies and groups focused on specific ethnic cultures should be sharing how people can get started on their own family history and ancestry projects: how to ask for info from family members, how to record that information (scanning, how to use a smart phone to record, etc.,), options for sharing that information with just family, or with the public, etc.
  • Community theaters should be posting stories about places and pieces related to any discussion of disease, or noting the ways past epidemics or pandemics have affected live theater in the past. Share these stories with the intent to say, “And live theater SURVIVED!” A group of online volunteers, recruited from your current home-bound volunteers or newly recruited, could help you compile enough information to share something every week – even twice a week. Maybe even every day.
  • There are art museums that are having a field day with social media during this crisis, such as the Getty, which has asked people to recreate famous painting scenes using whatever they can find in their own house. Check out a few of the Getty’s picks on its Instagram, and don’t forget to take a peek this hashtag. It’s a campaign that’s not only gone viral, it’s reminded people of just how images from art influence our lives and kept that museum relevant.
  • Operas could post people performing songs in operas, like La Traviata or La bohème, where a character is singing while dying and talk about how the performing arts have never flinched from portraying human suffering, and how that art can help people handle the horrors around them.
  • All performing arts groups – theaters, operas, dance companies, choirs, etc. – should be finding free broadcasts of performances by ANY group related to whatever art they themselves produce and encouraging home-based live-watch parties, and for everyone in their own community that’s watching to share thoughts as they watch on a Facebook thread or Tweet chat designed for them to share such. At least some of these quotes will demonstrate the power of performing art and be great in a grant proposal.
  • All arts groups should be posting messages regularly now about the links between producing art and experiencing art and the positive effects on such regarding mental health.
  • A nonprofit that produces a farmer’s market or artisan market should ask its clients to make short videos about what they are doing now – both challenges they are facing and what they are still producing and ways people might be able to order it online or pay for it in a safe exchange that involves a lot of physical distancing and no close contact whatsoever.
  • Many animal shelters and rescue agencies have done a brilliant job promoting now as a great time to foster an animal from the shelter, since families and individuals are homebound anyway, and it’s resulted in a windfall of great foster families for many shelters.
  • If your nonprofit promotes sports, the outdoors or an outdoor activity, this is a time to be interviewing people online who have benefited from your programs over the years, and sharing those stories online, to say, “This is why sports / this activity matters. This is how we have impact.” If you don’t need to do fundraising for activities, you could fundraise for equipment you will use once your operations resume. You could also be sharing with people how to clean and repair whatever equipment is associated with the sport or outdoor activity, or an at-home exercise that could help build strength or balance to help in engaging in that sport or outdoor activity.

Your volunteers would love to come up with their own ideas about what your nonprofit should be saying and doing to stay relevant now. You can bring them all together in a conference call or put one volunteer in charge of gathering their ideas, calling and emailing each one. Emailing is great – but calling someone is even better, in most scenarios. This doesn’t have to be a one-time ask: they should be given multiple opportunities to share their ideas with you, and opportunities to help bring those ideas to fruition.

Always invite feedback on what you are sharing, and track this feedback. You can use this to show the impact of your COVID19-related activities to potential funders.

And a reminder that there has never been a better time for your organization to launch activities and roles for online volunteers. How they could help you with the aforementioned activities should be obvious. Here are even more ideas, from my last blog.

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help. 

How long should text be to communicate effectively?

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  • How long should a web page be?
  • How long should text on a brochure page be?
  • How long should a press release be?
  • How long should a blog be?

I get these questions fairly often from nonprofits, NGOs, charities and small government offices.

Tweets have a text limit. Facebook posts have a limit on the amount of text you can post that will be seen in your timeline at a glance, without someone having to click “more.” But other communications products, in print and online, don’t have such strict character limits. So, how long should they be when it comes to their text?

A lot of communications professionals will tell you to make web page text, blogs, brochure text, etc., no longer than what would fit into a social media post. I am NOT one of those communications professionals.

I’m hearing people say, “People don’t read. Don’t write long bodies of text EVER, especially online.” I am NOT one of those people.

People have different learning styles: some prefer learning by engaging in an activity, some prefer learning by listening, some prefer to learn by watching, and some prefer to learn by reading.

People have different reading styles as well, even just online: some prefer reading short bits of text and seeing some short videos. But some do still like prefer – and WANT – to read comprehensive text, even if it’s “long.” What is great about a website is that your organization can easily cater to both of those groups: you can have a web page with introductory, summary, “catchy” text, or a video that’s just a minute long and gives the overview you think certain groups want, but that page or video can then link to the more in-depth information for all those many other people that want more information.

It’s worth noting that some people may want a bit of information today, but may come back later for more in-depth information. People rarely stay in exactly the same categories when it comes to how they want to access or consume information.

It’s also worth noting that by having in-depth information on your website, you create the messaging that everyone on your staff can refer back to, and that better ensures everyone is saying the same thing – that everyone is “staying on message.” It means your Executive Director, your receptionist, members of your board, volunteers – EVERYONE – can find the exact wording to describe absolutely everything about your program.

Catering to just one group of people when you are trying to communicate a message is a mistake. Don’t let any communications consultant or marketing manager pressure your organization into creating communications products only for the people that supposedly don’t like to read. Don’t be convinced that you can eliminate all of your long-form communications – you absolutely still need those.

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help. 

Adam ruins everything & educates a LOT

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There is a television show in the USA called Adam Ruins Everything. It is both a comedy show and an educational show that uses humor to debunk myths and misconceptions. I think it’s a great example of how to use an entertaining approach, even a provocative approach, to educate about science, including accurate health information. I think humanitarian aid and development agencies, particularly those concerned with public health education, should take note of it.

An example is the show’s comedic and medically-accurate presentation about the misunderstandings many – maybe most people – have regarding female physiology, particularly regarding the hymen and virginity. This is a good model of how much more interesting public health and women’s health videos could be:

It’s not a video that would be appropriate in every culture and country, but its frankness, fast-pace, humor and accuracy can’t be denied.

This isn’t the first time I’ve gotten good advice for outreach by nonprofits, including humanitarian organizations, from TV:

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.